My title is a quote from Buhdy yesterday in response to this comment from undercovercalico:
Female sexuality and the right to express it freely in any manifestation/identity is still really one of the corner stone threats to authoritarianism.
One of my favorite genres of books is autobiographies of everyday women from around the world. I’ve read tons of them and I remember at one point I recognized the theme that seemed to always emerge, whether it was burka’s in the Middle East, foot-binding in China, genital mutilation in parts of Africa, or chastity belts in Europe. The message was not only that women needed to be controlled, but more specifically, their sexuality needed to be controlled.
Many before me have come to this same conclusion. But the question still remains, why is it that women’s freely expressed sexuality is such a threat? What might change in this world if women were allowed individual choice about who to have sex with and when?
I think the answers to those questions go way beyond just a discussion about “free sex,” although that is certainly part of the equation. Since, for example, women always know who their children are, but men have had to know who a woman had sex with to have that same knowledge, I think we can safely assume that controlling a woman’s sexuality has been a way of guaranteeing the continuation of patriarchy.
But to me, I think there are even deeper questions at stake. I had an experience once that gave me just a hint of what that might be. In my 30’s I read the book When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone. I clearly remember at one point in my reading, I had a new feeling overtake me after years of being steeped in christian fundamentalism. The feeling was that I could choose with whom and when I wanted to have sex. I didn’t need all the rules and regulations I had been taught about it to govern my decision-making. The night that awareness hit, I had a powerful dream that I am certain was a direct result. The dream was of a tall skyscraper that was under construction. Only the frame had been built, and it was shifting to alter the design of the building. I immediately knew that the building was me and that something in my core had changed. I had, the moment that decision was made, claimed myself and my own power in some fundamental way I had never experienced before.
That is the power of the freedom of choice in matters of sexuality I believe. I can’t say that I completely understand the power contained in that right to choose. But if that freedom was available to all of us, I believe women would indeed rise up, and the world would be changed.
Alice Walker wrote a book about female genital mutilation titled Posessing the Secret of Joy. In the last chapter, she reveals what she believes to be the secret of joy in this context…RESISTANCE.
Well, I’m disappointed in Obama. Alas. Cajones? What Cajones? Not that Hillary would be any better, mind you.
There’s a minor flap (which I wish would become a major one) over Ed Shultz calling McCain a “warmonger” at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Grand Forks, ND, which the Obama campaign scrambled to repudiate, certainly out of a knee-knocking fear that Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would say mean things about Obama – horrors! (and as opposed to the nice things they say about Obama, and, for that matter, Hillary, now).
Gad.
McCain IS a warmonger. McCain has a hard-on for this war in Iraq and is itching, like his Master, President Cuckou Bananas W. Stumblecracker, for a war with and in Iran.
Had Obama simply said:
“Do I think he’s a warmonger? Well, he seems to be energized about keeping our troops in Iraq for a hundred years or more. He’s giddy with excitement over bombing Iran. He falls all over himself to embrace the policies of President Invade-First-Justify-It-Later himself, so, in the end Senator McCain seems to be rather allied with that small and shrinking, but none-the-less creepy and dangerous ilk that loves war in all its forms. My personal view? I believe that John McCain is a friend of the warmonger sect of the GOP, whether he wishes to define himself that way is his own business.”
. . . the question of Obama’s toughness and taking off the gloves would be settled. Bam! And, for the next couple of weeks the issue of McCain’s warmongerness would dominate the political headlines. Obama could’ve also played the media like a fiddle by following up on how McCain and the GOP don’t appear to give a damn about our wounded and emotionally-scarred soldiers (let alone the deceased ones), about the Iraqi refugees, and about the fact that Bush’s war has served as a recruiting poster of al Qaeda — a triumph for Osama bin Laden! Wow! What a news cycle! What a debate! What coverage of and for Obama!
Obama had an opportunity. He stupidly squandered it.
UPDATE: I wrote (above) about McCain/the GOP appear not to give a damn about, among other things, “the Iraqi refugees”. A few minutes ago, this article came up on Yahoo news. THIS is what bin Laden loves to see: living “nightmares” for Arabs resulting from Bush’s war in the Middle East. And what’s McCain doing to stop it?
UPDATE 2: Well, Hillary did something right and ousted Mark Penn. Now, will Obama reciprocate the good move and fire whoever the milqutoasty nebbish is who advised him (Obama) to cave and fawn before the harsh stares of Hannity and Limbaugh, before they even lit into him on Hate Radio . . . tomorrow?
WARNING — The following essay contains information about sports, which apparently does not have much of a following at Docudharma, so I’ll keep it brief.
All hail the winner of the DDMMTTPP (Docudharma March Madness Tournament Time Private Pool): Undercovercalico!!!
Even with the championship game still to be played Monday night, Undercovercalico has already clinched victory by having correctly picked all of the Final Four teams (Memphis, UCLA, North Carolina, and Kansas) and correctly picking Memphis and Kansas to advance to the championship game.
The Memphis Tigers defeated UCLA 78-63 in the first semifinal game Saturday. This was the 38th win of the season for Memphis, which sets a new NCAA record for most wins in a single season. Their only loss of the season was by 4 points to Tennessee. In the other semifinal game, Kansas beat North Carolina 84-66. North Carolina coach Roy Williams had previously coached for 15 years at Kansas before leaving to coach North Carolina. Kansas fans have been cranky ever since, so beating Williams’ team was sweet revenge. The winners of Saturday’s semifinal games play for the championship on Monday.
Who will win Monday night’s championship game between Memphis and Kansas? UCC picked Memphis to win it all, and only an idiot would disagree with her record of success thus far.
The Country, who cheers them on, goes into Denial and Refusal to grant what is owed to those they send!
The first Gulf war was a War of Choice when Bush Sr gave a certain old U.S. buddy a ‘wink and a nod’!
The conflict I served in was a War of Choice built on lies with the lies continuing, even to today, and just one of the many results was returning military suffering from results of Defoliant Spraying which Government, Producers of, and the Public Denied it had adverse effects. Vietnamesse and Soldiers are still suffering the effects and this Country still Denies!
There are other reports that trickle out, as there were with the defoliants of ‘Nam, like this one from Australia that people who really care pay attention to, others just give passing glances to.
Every day five U.S. soldiers attempt to take their own precious lives in the U.S. army. Or this article about Military Suicides which gives referance to present mysterious ailments of returning OIF Military personal.
Many U.S. veterans of the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq have complained of a range of serious diseases, including tumors, chronic blood strains in their urine and stool, sexual dysfunction, migraines, frequent muscular spasms, and other health issues similar to the debilitating symptoms of the “Gulf War Syndrome” and the Vietnam War Syndrome, known as “Agent Orange”.
Which is a Powerful Writeup that should be a Must Read, giving context to the Suicides and PTSD, which I’ll get to shortly, I suggest you visit and read!
Here are a few more recent reports on ‘Gulf War Syndrom’ you can view Here and Here, the second one again coming out of Australia.
A BIG Thank You goes out to Ilona Meagher over at PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within, if you don’t visit You Should! Ilona posts up some very important information and reports that should be read and embedded in this countries concious.
She has two recent ones that are powerful reminders, out of many, of what the Tragic Trauma’s many experiance, from the Combat Battlefields to the Extreme Tragedies within a society, can do to some who live them. Many of those who suffer from do so Silently, especially those who never experiance the Combat Trauma’s but their own events that live on within them, as well as the Combat Soldier who won’t admit to his or hers concious reminders and triggers.
Those of you who read PTSD Combat regularly know I’m currently a student at Northern Illinois University and shared my experiences the day of the shooting and beyond.
After all these years, and the many Wars, with returning troops, and the civilians of countries invaded, suffering from their Traumatic Nightmares of the Living Hell on Earth, PTSD is Finally being mentioned as a result to many who live through the personal and collective tragedies a society create.
It gave mention in an article, from my old hometown paper, I happened to catch yesterday, Discovery still haunts man, a very sad story about a baby:
“It was almost like a post-traumatic stress kind of thing. . . . It was haunting for a number of years, even today,” he said.
Along with the above I’ve heard it brought into the public realm, where it should already have been, a few times recently. One was a movie on Lifetime. The main charactor described an event from her childhood that haunts her with nightmares and fear that she, which was what the movie was about, was trying to rid herself from. Another was an interview on NPR where the young women mentions the trauma of her mothers death, both actually say the four important letters, PTSD.
The second post Ilona has is about Combat PTSD and the effects of on one soldier.
That link brings you to her site post, but hopefully she won’t mind, I’m bringing it over to you, as it contains just a short introduction with five video’s containing the show.
As Ilona writes:
A&E’s Intervention program recently featured a segment on Brad, a young man coping with his PTSD by self-medicating with alcohol and marijuana after two Iraq tours with the 101st Airborne.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Intervention is a “series in which people confront their darkest demons and seek a route to redemption” by profiling “people whose dependence on drugs and alcohol or other compulsive behavior has brought them to a point of personal crisis and estranged them from their friends and loved ones.” Brad’s journey is a powerful and important episode.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
This planet, not only this country, but this country Must Take The Lead, must finally start to realize what it’s Wars of Choice do to those they send but more important to those innocents forced into that Hell, the Long Term Effects!
By doing so it will better understand what, in silence, many living within it’s communities are going through from their own extreme tramatic life events and how it effects much of what they do as they moved forward from them, from the silent suffering to possibly causing others experiances that should not have occurred!
In White House Deliberations on War, Gen. Petraeus Has a Privileged Voice
For months, a debate raged at the top levels of the Bush administration over how quickly to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. But the discussion shut down soon after President Bush flew to Camp Arifjan, a dusty Army base near the Iraqi border in Kuwait, in January for a face-to-face meeting with the man whose counsel on the war he values most: Gen. David H. Petraeus.
During an 80-minute session, the president questioned his top commander in Iraq on whether further troop reductions, beyond those planned through July, would compromise security gains.
USA
Army Worried by Rising Stress of Return Tours to Iraq
WASHINGTON – Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for this year and beyond.
Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of soldiers’ mental health.
The stress of long and multiple deployments to Iraq is just one of the concerns being voiced by senior military officers in Washington as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Iraq commander, prepares to tell Congress this week that he is not ready to endorse any drawdowns beyond those already scheduled through July.
Texas officials remove 183 from polygamist compound
Among them are 137 children. Authorities seek a 16-year-old girl and the 50-year-old man said to have abused her.
HOUSTON — Texas child welfare officials said Saturday that they had removed 183 people — including 137 children — from an isolated polygamist compound in southwestern Texas after allegations that a 16-year-old girl there had been sexually abused.
Investigators from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services were still inside the YFZ Ranch — a guarded, self-sufficient compound of large dormitories built around an imposing white temple — on Saturday evening, two days after they began examining allegations that scores of girls may have been abused.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a 10,000-member sect that broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s, began building the compound on the former exotic game preserve four years ago. YFZ stands for “Yearning for Zion.”
Europe
Drought ignites Spain’s ‘water war’
After months of low rainfall, parched Catalonia has had to appeal to Madrid for help – and now ecologists fear the costs of a long-term solution
There is a common saying in Spain that during a drought, the trees chase after the dogs. Now it is ringing true as the country struggles to deal with the worst drought since the Forties: reservoirs stand at 46 per cent of capacity and rainfall over the past 18 months has been 40 per cent below average.
But months before the scorching summer sun threatens to reduce supplies to a trickle, a bitter political battle is raging over how to manage Spain’s scarcest resource – water.
Catalonia, in the parched north east, has been worst affected, with reservoirs standing at just a fifth of capacity.
France debates Beijing boycott as Olympic torch reaches London
But Gordon Brown confirms he will attend opening ceremony, despite ongoing Tibet crackdown
By John Lichfield in Paris
Sunday, 6 April 2008
The prospect of one of the world’s leading political figures boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games over Chinese actions in Tibet was raised and then seriously qualified yesterday in a sign that the invitation to China in August is causing severe differences within Western governments.
The French minister for human rights, Rama Yade, was quoted in Le Monde newspaper as saying that President Nicolas Sarkozy will boycott the opening of the games unless China agreed to two conditions: releasing political prisoners and holding talks with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet. But last night, the minister said the paper had misquoted her. “The word ‘condition’ was never used,” she said.
In the past, the President has said he cannot rule out the possibility that he might boycott the opening ceremony if China continues its crackdown in Tibet.
Middle East
Army faces new torture claims over arrest of Shia leader
The testament of a respected Shia elder, aged 70, suggests brutal treatment of civilians is still continuing, writes Robert Verkaik
Sunday, 6 April 2008
The British Army faces new allegations of torture and abuse over the arrest and detention of a Shia tribal leader and his family who claim they were hooded and beaten by soldiers based at Basra airport last year.
The allegations could prove highly damaging as they come just days after the Government said that abuses committed by British soldiers had been limited to 2003 and 2004 and involved only a “very small minority” of servicemen.
In the new claims, which are being prepared for legal action in the UK courts, Jabbir Hmoud Kammash, 70, the leader of a sub-division of the Albu-Darraj tribe in southern Iraq, alleges that a group of 20 soldiers raided his home in Al-Gzaizah, Basra, in the early hours of the morning in April last year.
Iran joined militias in battle for Basra
RANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.
Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.
Petraeus intends to use the evidence of Iranian involvement to argue against any reductions in US forces.
Dr Daniel Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia, said: “There is no question that Petraeus will be tough on Iran. It is one thing to withdraw troops when there is purely sectarian fighting but it is another thing if it leaves the Iranians to move in.”
Asia
China struggles to quell Tibet rebels
A PICTURE is emerging of desperate and prolonged Tibetan resistance despite the huge scale of China’s military operation across the mountainous region that one ancient poet called “a place where snow lions dance”.
The Chinese press focused yesterday on a campaign to whip up resentment against the foreign media as reports outside China spoke of at least eight unarmed Tibetans shot dead by paramilitary police.
Scraps of evidence collected by exiles, campaigners, military analysts and daring witnesses inside Tibet all point to the conclusion that China can subdue the Tibetans but cannot win the spiritual war.
Afghans Battle Drug Addiction
Treatment Centers for Women Reflect Increasing Opium Use
KABUL — The first days were so painful that Mina Gul could barely sit upright. Thin and lanky with wide brown eyes, she rubbed the back of her neck ceaselessly with fingers stained reddish black by an opium pipe. She couldn’t shake the nausea. The light was almost blinding in the clean, white-walled medical clinic, where she lay crumpled in bed for days.
Before that, opium had been about the only thing keeping Gul afloat. It started four years ago with the headaches. A relative told her to try a bit of opium as a cure. “I tried it once a little — then the next day more, then more again, and then I was addicted,” Gul said.
Latin America
Beatings and abuse give Mexico’s emo teens plenty to feel anguished about
Beto stares with defiant melancholy from behind a jet-black fringe that both covers his eyes and identifies him as a member of one of Mexico’s fastest growing and most hated urban tribes: ‘They beat me up because I’m emo.’
The 15-year-old describes his harrowing few minutes curled up on the pavement waiting for four members of a different subculture to get bored with kicking him. ‘But I’m not going to change for them. Pain doesn’t bother me anyway.’
The baying brutality of the mob was captured on mobile phone cameras and relayed on national TV and posted on YouTube. It ended when the police intervened.
Thousands flee floods in Brazil
Flooding in north-eastern Brazil has killed at least 15 people and driven tens of thousands from their homes, civil defence officials have said.
The victims drowned when the River Paraiba burst its banks and the walls of a medium-sized dam cracked in the normally arid state of Paraiba.
The flood waters, caused by torrential rains, have also destroyed corn and bean crops, and washed away roads.
Africa
Zimbabwe on the brink: War or Peace?
After a week of talks and rumours, the gloves are off over the disputed presidential poll. Ian Evans in Harare and David Randall in London report
They’ve had an election; now the fight for Zimbabwe begins. Yesterday, the strange, shadowy week of meetings behind closed doors, whispers, rumours, and speculation seemed to be at a close as both President Robert Mugabe and his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai started to talk, and act, tough.
Opposition leader Mr Tsvangirai, in combative mood at a news conference, accused Mr Mugabe of preparing “a war against the people”, and deploying loyal forces, including liberation war veterans, ahead of a presidential run-off vote. “Militants are being rehabilitated,” he said, adding that the central bank was printing money “for the finance of violence”. Calling Mr Mugabe a lame-duck president, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader said he “must concede to allow us to move on with the business of rebuilding and reconstructing the country”.
Candidates for the Presidency of the United States raise hundreds of millions of dollars and compete in primaries and caucuses in state after state in order to win convention delegates. They engage in a series of nationally televised debates, appear on political programs like Meet the Press and Hardball, and strive to demonstrate to America and the world in the early months of presidential election years that they are ready to take their campaigns to the next level.
Obama’s campaign strategists knew all of these campaign events were relatively important, but realized they were just preliminaries to the ultimate test of leadership that awaited him. They knew by early April that the time had come to get serious, that the time had come to launch the most crucial phase of Obama’s presidential campaign, that the time had come for Obama to go where the votes are, to go to the only place he could go in all of America to face that ultimate test of leadership.
Grand Forks, North Dakota.
I’m only an advocate, but I knew that too, so I went here:
My brother Craig, a lifelong Republican, joined me as I waited in line. That line kept getting longer, and longer, and longer . . .
17,000 Americans came from small towns all across North Dakota and Minnesota to see the next President of the United States. They came from farms throughout the Red River Valley, they came from the colleges and universities of the Upper Midwest, they came from Native American reservations, from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, from the VA Hospital in Fargo, from homes and schools and churches in this country’s heartland, where Americans still believe in decency and justice and democracy.
These men and women and children who came to see and hear Barack Obama, who stood in line for hours on this spring day in this eighth year of BushCo fascism don’t want to see less jobs and more wars. They’re sick and tired of less jobs and more wars, of lies and torture and Katrinas, of Enrons and Bear Stearns and Deciders, of endless coverups and endless betrayal. They want to believe in America again, they want to be heard in Washington D.C. again, they want their country back, and it looked to me like they are damn well ready to take it back.
This Grand Forks Herald Photo Gallery has some good photos of Obama’s speech and related events on April 4th. I also took some photos and apologize for their less than professional quality.
Once Craig and I made it inside, most of the crowd was directed towards bleacher seating, but we happened to be in part of the line that got sent to a seating section on the arena floor only 60 feet from the stage.
That was a tough break.
Senator Conrad introduced Obama:
Conrad endorsed Obama not long after he announced his candidacy, only Obama’s fellow senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, had endorsed Obama at that point. So when Conrad asked Obama if he could give the keynote address at the North Dakota State Democratic Convention on April 4th, Obama said “Yes I can!”
Did he give a good keynote address?
Yes he did.
Did I manage to take any good photos of it?
No I didn’t.
So here it is on YouTube:
I know Obama hasn’t spoken out for Impeachment, I know he hasn’t taken a stand for all of the progressive principles we believe in, but I also know he is going to be smeared like no Democrat has ever been smeared before. He is going to be slandered day in and day out, from now until November, because he’s a Democrat, because he’s black, because the corporate war machine and it’s bought and paid for hack politicians and media thugs are not going to tolerate even the slightest challenge to their power.
They don’t give a damn about people like us:
If they take Obama down, it’s over. For all of us. For keeps.
Progressives who aren’t satisfied with Obama should think about that. They should think about what it must feel like to know a shit storm of slander is coming his way, to know “one lone nut” could end his life at any time, to know the truth about his death would be covered up just like John Kennedy’s assassination was, like Martin Luther King’s assassination was, like Robert Kennedy’s assassination was, like the S&L scandal was, like Iran-Contra was, like Florida 2000 was, like 9/11 was, like the targeting of Iraq was, like Ohio 2004 was, like every other corporate government crime has been for the last fifty years.
Obama isn’t defending American democracy from a keyboard like you and me, he’s putting his life on the line for it every day. That’s the ultimate test, that alone has earned him your vote. This one man has done more in a few short months to restore democracy in this country than the entire progressive blogosphere has in all its years of existence. So maybe it’s time for the dissatisfied democracy defenders among us, who look down on Obama with such disdain, to climb down from their progressive pedestals long enough to cut him some slack.
Or would that be too much to ask?
This my brother Craig:
He’s a lifelong Republican, but he’s willing to give Obama a chance, he wants a president who will at least try to unite this country, heal its divisions, and restore decency and integrity to government before its too late. I’d like to see some unity and healing too, right after Impeachment and war crimes trials, but neither Obama nor Democrats in Congress have the power yet to confront the corporate criminal masters of this country.
An election landslide mandate would give them that power. The most decisive electoral mandate in American history is within reach. Obama is reaching for it, and if we all reach for it too it’s going to happen. There’s nothing BushCo and their corporate criminal masters fear more than that, there’s nothing their Bush Dogs fear more than that, it would destroy their control of the government for a generation, it would render them vulnerable at long last to the Constitution and the laws of this country.
I think Obama knows what needs to be done with that mandate. I think he will do what needs to be done once he is in that White House and has the power. I’ve seen him, I’ve seen with my own eyes the effect he has on people. It’s not hype, it’s not superficial, the power he has within him to inspire everyone who sees him and hears him is real, it is a force multiplier, it is a source of energy and confidence and determination we can summon strength from in the coming months and years as we help him change this country and the world.
This is the stage a few minutes after Obama’s speech, he was on the arena floor talking to people in the crowd at the far end of the stage, one American to another, because that’s what America is supposed to be about:
On January 20, 2009, I hope Obama will be on that Inaugural stage in Washington D.C., talking to everyone in the world on behalf of every American, one human being to another, because that’s what this world is supposed to be about.
